Ender's Game Review

Ender’s Game hit the movie theaters on its opening night of November 1, and it took first place in the box office that weekend, making $27 Million just over that weekend. In the week it has been in theaters, Ender’s Game has accumulated about $53 Million, putting it on par with other sci-fi movies like After Earth and beating out similar adaptations like The Golden Compass and Eragon. Since the budget for Ender’s Game was $110 Million, they will be looking to earn double what they have in this first week to at least break even.

           

 Even though most reviews are giving Ender’s Game ratings like 60% (Rotten Tomatoes) and a 51/100 (Metacritic), I would give this new sci-fi adaptation an 85/100. The movie is a thought-provoking Journey of Ender, the genius main character who is recruited by Colonel Graff and what seems to be a world government to train to be a future colonel of the army against another planet’s inevitable invasion. In the book, Ender’s Game, the kids are recruited for this program around ages 6-8, but the movie sets the children at an older age of around 12-14, and it works fine. Asa Butterfield does a wonderful job depicting Ender Wiggin, who is portrayed to constantly be thinking of logical and strategic ways to live and to advance, and Abigail Breslin (always a favorite actress of mine) does justice to Valentine Wiggin in the limited amount of screen time she had in this first movie of the potential series.

            

But the part of the movie that hits the hardest is in the movie’s opening quote: "In the moment when I know my enemy well enough to destroy him, in that moment I think I also love him." Throughout the movie, we see Ender developing as a compassionate person as well as a brilliant warrior. It is there two elements clashing against each other that make the movie itself brilliant.

           

The only reasons I can see for its average box office earnings are: 1. The trailers weren’t focused enough on the story of Ender, an interesting and quirky hero. Instead they focused on Colonel Graff (Harison Ford) as the decisive and rough-edged commander of the movie—much less interesting for an audience who wants some intersting sci-fi. 2. It is competing with other big-shots in the sci-fi world this month, including Thor: The Dark World just a week later, and Catching Fire on the 22^nd. 

I was much more excited for Thor and Catching Fire that Ender’s Game, and even though that didn’t stop me from seeing it as well, it may have been edged out of the sci-fi market this month by its strong competitors.

            

Overall, I recommend Ender’s Game highly as a movie that is more thought-provoking and meaningful than Thor, but probably not Catching Fire, which will be an absolute must see, come Nov. 22.